Margie Clayman

Hello lovely readers,

I wanted to alert you that this site will be using LiveFyre as the commenting system now instead of the default WordPress system. I have been exposed to LiveFyre via many blogs I respect a great deal, including those belong to 12most, Gini Dietrich, Danny Brown, and Jay Baer.

There are some things I am concerned about that I will be monitoring, but I want you to feel free to offer me feedback too. If this system will make it harder for you to comment or if you have other issues, please let me know. Obviously I can’t make everyone happy (lord do I try!) but I will do my best to make as many of you as comfortable as possible.

Sound good?

When the word came out in June that Google was going to be launching another social media platform, I was not all that stoked. I realize I was in the majority, but I had not even really gotten the chance to explore Google Buzz before it disappeared. Google scares me anyway. Hello, search + social media? Lordy, it could turn into, well, Facebook! 😮 Despite previous social media flubs, though, there was definitely a sense of excitement about this new Google Plus. There were so many bells and whistles beyond just a social media thing. There was talk about how the hangout feature would kill GoToMeeting and Facebook chat. There was talk about how the +1 button would kill SEO. Heck, to listen to some of the hype, it seemed like Google Plus was just plain going to kill everything! It was going to be the Dexter darling of the online world.

I started playing with Google Plus right around July 4th, so I guess I’ve been there close to 3 months. That’s a quarter of the year, mathematically. And to me, at least, Google Plus still seems pretty confusing. I still don’t understand what “huddles” are. I do’t understand the difference between following and circling. Are you sharing if you’re following? And if someone circles me and I circle them in return, why do I get a notification that they have circled me back? That could go on forever, couldn’t it?

My biggest concern about Google Plus, however, is that it is not really feeling like a “social” media platform to me. The more I stick with it, the more it feels like a broadcasting platform. I know this because I realized with a start that that is primarily how I have been using it these three months.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About Google Plus. Do you like it?

In the spring of 2011, it was difficult to navigate the blogosphere without bumping into a post about the social media supplemented revolution spreading throughout the Middle East. Was social media really helping the cause? Would these revolutions have happened without social media? Would they have been as effective?

Regardless of how the bloggers answered all of those questions, one thing was pretty clear. There was palpable excitement in the air. Holy smokes – people – young people – were breaking through decades and/or centuries of programming and saying, “Nope, this isn’t cool.”

On the other hand, as we flash forward to September 2011, hardly anyone is blogging about the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is now spreading all across the nation. A few people have posted a picture of the “We are the 99%” statement, but that’s been it. And I’ve really looked. Beyond Huffington Post, there isn’t a whole lot going on in the blogging world about this massive social movment.

Why?

You would think this would be a golden child for people who have been proclaiming that social media is in fact behind these big movements. You would think that the folks who talk about the millennial generation would be all over this. You’d think business bloggers would be all over this.

Where are the posts?

Is it too early to write about what is going on? Do we have to know the ending before we write about it? I am just entirely perplexed. Maybe you can help me out.

image by Robert Linder. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/linder6580

Ever since I first heard about Triberr, I felt in my gut that I just wouldn’t like it. A lot of that was because mostly what people talk about when they talk about Triberr is the automation aspect. I don’t really see the point in automating your social media presence. It has always seemed to me like the concept of sending a robot to go on a date for you. Why bother?

However, enough people I really like and really respect invited me in and told me that Triberr was great that I finally had to cave and give it a try. I am not so bull-headed that I am unwilling to change my mind, especially in scenarios where I haven’t actually gathered information my own self. So, a couple of weeks ago, I signed into Triberr for the first time.

[Read more…] about Triberr is okay. It just isn’t for me.

When Twitter first came out, one of the first things people were saying about it was that it was going to change how people did business. It was going to personalize client-customer relationships. It was going to humanize brands. Remember all that stuff?

Here’s the funny thing about Twitter and how it has evolved. A lot of the people who joined up so that they could do business somehow forgot along the way that they were using Twitter for business. They started to move over into the land of “How many followers can I get” and “What’s my Klout score?” Unless you are social media consultant (and even then you’re on shaky ground), these numbers do not necessarily prove that you are great at your actual paying job. If you are a plumber, people aren’t gonna really care that your company has 5,000 followers. They want to know if you can get their sinks to stop making that drip sound.

So how can we use Twitter for business? Is it actually a lost cause? I really don’t think so. We just need to get back to our roots a little bit. For example:

1. Make sure you are networking with people who may at some point buy from you. This is where the numbers game can really mislead a lot of people. In my case, a lot of the people I network with on Twitter are my peers, not my prospects. How about you?

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About How To Use Twitter For Business